A man's thoughts while interning in the Netherlands and how he has grown or not when he returns home

08/22/2010

Goodbye Eindhoven...

This should be my last post from the Netherlands. It is Sunday night in Eindhoven and my flight back to Boston is tomorrow. Although I am very excited to be back home with Bridget in our new apartment. I am also a bit torn, because although I don't really want to stay here that much longer I am somewhat sad to be leaving. I have grown very comfortable here in Eindhoven. It is a nice place and easy place to get into a rhythm to get comfortable and move forward. Maybe that is how I should know it is time for me to come home, as I have become comfortable and part of the challenge of this journey for me was to be uncomfortable, to take myself out of my comfort zone. No matter how I look at it, this experience was a success.

I was able to accomplish everything I set out to do here. And in the process I learned so much about myself, so much that will make me a better person, and a better employee and hopefully manager one day.

This last weekend I was able to see my friends and do some things I wanted to do before I left. On Friday I was able to go back to the pizza man, which was a great experience again and I had a great time yet again. Here are a few pictures from the evening:

me at the pizza making spot.

my friend Razvan is in the background making a pizza, and that is the infamous pizza man in the foreground.

This was my pizza, where last time we may not have put enough cheese on or at least that is what we thought when we put in in the oven, this time I didn't have that concern.

The pizza man was less crowded this time and we sat downstairs by the pizza oven. It is Gaby on the left, myself, Razvan and Alexey.

On Saturday I felt like I passed a test and became assimilated with the Dutch people. My friends Gaby Razvan and I decided to go to a music festival in a neighboring town called Best. The music festival called LakeDance was on the shores of a lake. It was 4 stages with with dj's performing at each. As for my acclimation well the event was about 10 kilometers from Eindhoven and instead of taking a bus there we decided to ride our bikes. It was about a 45 minute bike ride each way. The day was a really good time. Here are some pictures from the event.

we got there and did some relaxing after our long bike ride

this was the stage.

I was hesitant to go to this festival as I thought I may want to pack all day, but I thought that I would rather spend my last Saturday with my friends as I had all day Sunday to pack. I am very glad I made that decision, as I had a great time. It was a nice close to my summer here. As well my musical preferences although not totally changed have opened a bit to include a lot more music which was good as the festival did not feature music I really would have enjoyed before my trip to Europe.

After we returned from the music festival we went to my house to have some food then biked about 3+ kilometers to a party. All in all we biked over 26 kilometers (over 16 miles) on Saturday. By far the most I have biked in quite a while in one day. I feel like I am Dutch now.

Now it is time to come home. Thanks for following me on here, I hope you enjoyed experiencing my journey with me. I have not decided what I will do with the blog when I return perhaps I will write about my transition back to normalcy so check back.